Has anyone done this? Interested to do it as I would love to be able to watch YouTube video, light surfing etc on my oldish Sony Brava. Nowt wrong with the telly so I don't want to be buying a new one.

Got an xbox but cba waiting nearly 5 mins before being able to get onto YouTube or surfing so would love something I can just plug and play.

Any suggestions?

connect your PC or laptop to the telly and use a wireless mouse and keyboard? Probably the easiest and cheapest way.

 

Some set top boxes give you access to iPlayer etc but not sure about surfing ability. NowTV is cheap but doesn't offer much IMO

Well, that is what Chromecast does, but it's not brilliant. I can imagine the web surfing element, if it does it, to be awful, as there's no keyboard.


We've just managed to track down a Boxee Box, which lets us play stuff off a network drive and use various apps too. It's essentially what Samsung use to make their TVs smart, but in a box of it's own. Not the worlds cheapest thing, even if you can find one.


Like Lee said, if you want to be doing any web browsing, the simple solution is an HDMI cable to a laptop and wireless KB and Mouse. They're cheap as chips and usable in various situations.

 A Rasberry Pi can do this quite well - I know some people that use them this way.

 

There's also a good few Android Sticks on eBay -I have no experience with these, but in theory should be reasonable.

 

I have an older TV but a cheapish Blu Ray player that does all the smart TV stuff, I haven't tried sirfing, but I can imagine it would be a bit painful. For YouTube, it's easiest to pair a phone with it so you can just find the video on your phone and tell it to play on the TV.

Why is the xbox so slow? If it's poor internet all of your options will be slow. As a city boy I get downloads of 56mb so everything is rocket quick. Even when we had 8mbps we kept a PC with two TV tuners connected to the TV. It's brilliant currently, pMS Media Centre records whatever we want and we can store a stupid amount of TV on the 1tb hard drive ( we delete stuff after we watch it), the DVD player is inbuilt and we use an external hd for any films the kids give us. We just upgraded after 5 years with the first PC, transferred the tuners etc into a near silent small case PC with 125mb SSD.

The PC connects to TV via hdmi and the tv to our hifi using a dac convertor (TV optic out hifi no optic in). The TV is a Sony smart TV but in all honesty the interface is a faff. We watch using the PC on the hdmi input (wireless keyboard or PC remote) and if we're recording two channels go to standard tv. The TV PC is only used as an entertainment centre, no email, word etc. all done on the work PC upstairs.

Cost? About £600, I won't pay sky as it's a million channels and nothing on with crap service. The only thing I miss not having Sky is Wales rugby team beating England in Twickers :-).

The money paid to Sky in a year by our neighbours and two of our sons (one is too wise), over two years would buy them a better PC than ours and the same tv ( for less than ours cost 3 years ago). Unless you are desperate to give your cash to Sky think about it.

We watch recorded TV, catch up TV, love film, blink box, YouTube, use Google (earth is great on a 46 inch TV) and loads of other things. We have a computer programme which gives artificial 3d sound. SWMBO shows off holiday snaps etc. to her cronies streamed from our 3tb drive (£99).

But back to the beginning - what's your internet speed? As you can tell by the rant I'm quite (!) happy with our solution :-)

Buy an old Wii.

 

We run iPlayer, Lovefilm and youTube all through it.

 

Might not scratch your geek itch like using a Raspberry Pi.

Buy an old Wii.

 

We run iPlayer, Lovefilm and youTube all through it.

 

Might not scratch your geek itch like using a Raspberry Pi.

 

+1 and Neflix.

Problem for me is that the xbox takes about 2 mins to boot to the point where you can go into the xbox menu, then it takes another 2-3 minutes to get to any thing like Iplayer or youtube.

 

Hadn't thought of a dedicated PC as a TV tuner - would possibly be willing to think about giving sky up esp as that would save me a packet each year esp as Netflix/Lovefilm are now at the point of almost providing as much content ( I don't have Skysports and rarely use the movie channel subscription I have).

 

My connection is about 8Mb atm so probably not helping the issue.

Not sure that you can get a RPi to do all the catchup services yet....  Does a great job of streaming media from my NAS though.

 

I assume a YouView box should provide all the catchup services, but I have never used one, so not sure.

Have you looked at now tv?

It's a box from sky that claims to do exactly what you want - turn a normal tv into a smart tv. Backed by sky but much more pay as you go / pay per view style than the satellite packages.

Buy an old Wii.

We run iPlayer, Lovefilm and youTube all through it.

Might not scratch your geek itch like using a Raspberry Pi.

Also a bit of a waste of an hd tv, the resolution and graphics output of the wii is pretty poor

Or alternatively a "roku" box is apparently the now tv box without the sky branding ie Get netflix etc on it

roku only seems to support iPlayer and Demand5, no ITVplayer or 4oD....

Android stick is the way to go, and if you look for one that has miracast then you can also show your android phone/pad on the TV.

 

John

With cashback the Revo RL80 is only £100 now.  Bargain.

 

It will run anything you want.

Where is doing the cashback? Def interested in that.

OPTIONS

 

1. Old Wii (Handy as remote included, but not HD and a bit clunky)

2. NowTV Box (Actually a previous generation Roku box)

3. Roku 2

4. Raspberry Pi (Requires a bit of geekery to work smoothly)

5. Smart cheap Blu-Ray player (currently £50-£80 in supermarkets for LG / Sony / Samsung) will give from Netflix / Lovefilm / YouTube / iPlayer from a decent brand.

6. Old PS3 + Sony PS3 remote

 

Also, I would ask yourself if you would REALLY use it for browsing, or would you likely just use your tablet / phone...

Where is doing the cashback? Def interested in that.

 

Ebuyer.  I ordered a "base" one on Monday.  Intel 1007u , 2GB DDR3 , 500GB , Wireless, GB Lan , Bluetooth for £120 delivered.  £20 Cashback.

Cashback offer runs out 9th Jan.

I've just looked at android sticks - not heard of them before - look like a very attractive option for the money

Ebuyer.  I ordered a "base" one on Monday.  Intel 1007u , 2GB DDR3 , 500GB , Wireless, GB Lan , Bluetooth for £120 delivered.  £20 Cashback.

Cashback offer runs out 9th Jan.

Just had a look and nothing near that price ( I noticed that all of them showing come with Win 8 and no  way to alter the spec) - cheapest is a Revo RL70 @ £199.98

Just had a look and nothing near that price ( I noticed that all of them showing come with Win 8 and no  way to alter the spec) - cheapest is a Revo RL70 @ £199.98

 

Uff.  Mine now shows as out of stock.  It is the second time recently that one at that price has been available.  I ordered one 2 months ago for a fiver less.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/525101

Was in Maplin yesterday and saw a dongle that seemed to do what I was wanting so ended up buying it - linky for £79.

 

Got it home, connected it and it pretty much does all that I want on it. Email, light surfing, youtube, playing content from the NAS drive (bought at the same time).